Kevin Cooper was dealt a setback today in his decades-long effort to appeal his conviction and death sentence for a brutal attack in 1983 that killed four people in Chino Hills.

A federal appeals court today denied Cooper’s request for a full panel of judges to reconsider an appellate issue in his case.

Full court opinion (114 pages): Court opinion in Kevin Cooper case.pdf Cooper now has 90 days to petition the U.S. Supreme Court to review the decision by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, said Ronald Matthias, senior assistant attorney general.

Cooper has been on death row since 1985, when a jury recommended that he be put to death for the murders of Douglas and Peggy Ryen, their 10-year-old daughter Jessica, and 11-year-old houseguest Christopher Hughes.

They were attacked at night inside the Ryens’ home in Chino Hills. Cooper had escaped two days earlier from the California Institution for Men in Chino.

The 9th Circuit court stayed Cooper’s execution in 2004 on the day it was set to be carried out, and ordered a lower court to review evidence in his case. Following the lower court’s review, a federal judge upheld the death sentence for Cooper.

Cooper appealed the judge’s ruling, and his appeal was rejected in 2007 by a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit court.

Cooper subsequently asked the court to reconsider its ruling with an 11-judge panel. It’s that petition that was denied today by the court.

A group of 28 judges were given an opportunity to weigh in on Cooper’s request for a review by an 11-judge panel. A majority of the 28 was needed for the petition to succeed.

At least 11 judges supported Cooper’s petition, but the exact tally of the judge’s votes wasn’t disclosed by the court, Matthias said.

Circuit Judge William A. Fletcher, whose written dissent was joined by four other judges, said the state “may be about to execute an innocent man,” and blasted the lower court’s review of evidence in Cooper’s case.

“There is no way to say this politely,” Fletcher wrote. “The district court failed to provide Cooper a fair hearing and flouted our direction to perform … tests.”

Mattias said that before an execution date can be set for Cooper, the appeals process in his case must first be exhausted, and a method of administering lethal injections to death-row inmates must by approved by the state.